One of the reasons, I got into this priest business is that I
believe that God is up to something in our lives. I believe that God isn’t
sitting on his throne in some distant corner of space—twiddling his thumbs
watching how everything turns out, but I believe that God is active in our
world and in our lives in very meaningful ways.
I truly believe that God has something for each of us everytime we
Isaiah the prophet talks about a God like this---he speaks in
the opening verses of today's reading about a God who came down and did awesome
things that the people didn’t expect. He speaks of God who molds his people
like a potter molds clay. Christmas is about this thing we call incarnation
where God comes into our world in flesh. Where God comes and dwells among us.
We just sang a song where we cried O come O come
Emmanuel—that God would come and be with us and do something.
Do you believe that God has something for you today? Do you believe that God has something for you this advent season in
the lead up to Christmas? I do.
I want to tell you about what might be the worst movie I have
ever seen. It was an Adam Sandler movie
and maybe that tells you enough –the movie is named Click. Does anybody know it?
It is a movie about Adam’s character who gets a remote
control that he can use to fast forward the unpleasant parts of his life. His boss is yelling at him and he fast
forwards through it. He is stuck in
traffic –he fast forwards through it.
I know what Liam is thinking over there—I would
like to fast forward through the next three weeks and get right to Christmas morning. Some of you are thinking—it would be great to
have that remote right now—fast forward right through this sermon.
I also know that some of you would like to have that remote
so that you could fast forward through this season, for some of us it is not
the most wonderful time of the year---for some of us this season is going hard—and
maybe we wish we could just wake up on January 2nd and put it behind
us. Let me say while we don’t have a remote to get us through this time, but we
have a God who gets right down in the muck of life and walks with us.
At first when Adam finds his remote life is great, but
then it starts getting out of control— he can no longer control the fast
forwarding –all of a sudden everything is fast forward. not only through the
unpleasant parts but also through the good stuff—that makes life so grand. And it just keeps getting worse and worse as
his life goes faster and faster until he ends up at the end of his life having
missed everything. Now I don’t remember
exactly how it ends, but I think it ended up actually being a dream and he
hasn’t lost his entire life and now he has an opportunity to live a different life and not miss out.
We are entering a season, where we are about to go break neck
speed as if our lives are being fast
forward from now until January 2nd. And if we are not careful---we could wake
up on January 2nd and missed some of the wonderful gifts that God
might have for us over the next 3-4 weeks.
In the Gospel today Jesus speaks about being alert—that
something big is about to happen, that God is about to do something and our
posture here is to be awake- to be ready, to be alert for the movement of God
in our lives and in our world because we don’t know when it’s going to come.
But if we are not awake. Jesus invites
us to press pause to stop and look for
the movement of God today, tomorrow.
Let me congratulate you today for doing something kind of
counter cultural today—you paused your life and came here and said God I am
yours for the next 45 minutes, hours—I give this time to you. And as I said at the beginning God has
something for you—maybe a moment of peace, maybe a reminder that you are loved
beyond all, maybe a word of forgiveness.
So during break neck season, Jesus invites us to press pause --to
stop—cause God is doing something in our lives and I would hate for you to miss
it.
AMEN
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